from dozens of people in our area. >> Mount Bellevue police started the investigation and they say the alleged crime involves stolen data from the dark web. ABC 13 S Courtney Carpenter is live in Mount Bellevue with the latest on this one. Courtney >> Yeah. Eric.
Police tell us they know of 35 victims of this particular scheme. And these people didn’t click on anything or give out their banking passwords. They simply woke up one morning to find money missing from their accounts. It was back in June when Mount Bellevue police realized a trend with some fraud. Reports found a few other local departments were working similar cases and then connected the dots to determine they believe a local group of people are responsible.
So far, 40 total arrests have been made. Some as far away as Georgia and Illinois, but many were here in the Houston area. These four people, all from Baytown, are who police say are the ringleaders. Gregory Edwards, the third doc Frank, Jason Gibson and Joel Mcgilberry.
They are all charged with money laundering and engaging in organized criminal activity.
Police say they got a hold of financial information off the dark web from data breaches, and used it to then wire money out of people’s accounts. The total amount of money police say they stole is somewhere between 300 and $60,000 to $600,000. Many of the other arrests that were made were people accused of letting these guys use their bank accounts to funnel the stolen money. >> Once they get the information, they start making wire transfers out of the victims bank accounts. But in order to be successful, they have to transfer that money into a clean account.
And that’s where they begin recruiting other people. >> Now, Chief Ellison says that most of the other people arrested were friends or family. Of those main four organizers in this, but they say they did do some advertising on social media, kind of advertising folks to make a quick buck by helping them out.
Now, coming up at 630, we’ll have some more information on what you can do to try not to end up a victim of a scheme like this. Reporting live.
